ZOWIE was founded at the end of 2008. It is a brand dedicated to the development of professional esports equipment. At the time of its debuted, there were only 3 hardworking employees and 1 product to begin with. As there was no "esports" back then, ZOWIE had spent a lot of time gathering, listening, and engaging with competitive gamers/players on the internet, forum, and gaming community worldwide. That got us into the world of esports. 

As the first mouse ZOWIE had ever released in 2009 -The EC Series, which was a hardworking result with one of the most legendary Counter-Strike players of that time: HeatoN. That set the foundation of ZOWIE to its dream of providing the best esports professional equipment. 

On the other hand, BenQ is a display expert from the beginning of its time, and it has more than 35 years of history from its early days. BenQ had met ZOWIE back in 2010, and getting the aid from ZOWIE on their professionalism and relationship with HeatoN and SpawN; co-developing the first-ever LCD monitor that is tailor to gamers: XL2410T. When the first XL monitor was launched in 2010, 3D technology was all the rage and almost every brand used 120Hz panels for 3D display applications. However, the XL2410T, adopted the same panel for a totally different 2D application; esports. This was the result of a collaboration between BenQ’s engineers and the original ZOWIE team, a group of veteran Counter-Strike players and enthusiasts.  XL2410T was well accepted by the Counter-Strike community, not because of its cutting-edge technology, but because it was the first monitor able to support 120Hz refresh rate at lower resolutions such as 4:3, 640 x 480 or 800 x 600 – the resolutions adopted by many CS players early on. This was not something can be found on other monitors, they could only run 120Hz at 16:9, or 1920 x 1080. It also had display modes and smart scaling to convince players that TFT LCD displays could compete with CRT monitors when it came to gameplay.

The BenQ XL series soon became the most popular gaming monitor to gamers around the world and been adopted by worldwide tournaments without much of our supports. It's not because of the latest technology, or the cheapest price. It was all because of - the products are design inside the game, with real player's insight, development, and testing. 

BenQ had gone through its journey from selling commodity monitors, to the gaming industry, and the esports industry. Thanks to ZOWIE's support and their professionalism. It was until the end of 2015, BenQ and ZOWIE are heading in the same direction with the same dream. The merge took place and made BenQ ZOWIE as known today. 

We strive not to become the biggest esports brand, but the most professional.

Be Series, It's Not Just a Game.